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"We need to remember this in terms of everyday situations. If you think about the way workplaces and organizations are set up, for example, it raises an interesting question: Is competition the best way to get your employees to produce?

“It's possible, in some circumstances, that competition is good. In other ways, people might be preoccupied with bringing other people down, and that's not what an organization wants."

Participants in the Princeton study, the results of which are published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, were connected to an electromyogram, which captures the electrical activity when an individual smiles, or experiences pleasure.

They were then shown photographs of groups which the researchers expected to illicit particular responses: the elderly (pity), students (pride), drug addicts (disgust) and rich professionals (envy).

The images were then paired with a positive event (winning five dollars), a negative event (getting splashed by a taxi going through a puddle) and a neutral one (going to the bathroom).

The participants were asked how they felt about each pairing, while their instinctive reaction was captured by the electromyogram.

In most cases the electrical equipment found people took pleasure in the misfortune of those they envied, even if they did not report this.

Professor Fiske said people were often unwilling to report feeling schadenfreude, so it was necessary to track their reaction using scientific equipment.

A further experiment found participants were more willing to give an electric shock to someone they felt envious of, with the researchers expressing interest at how ready people were to say they would hurt someone for the study.